Skift Take: It appears as though Virgin America might beat Southwest in being the first of the two to fly to sunny Honolulu as both airlines look to expand beyond the lower 48. Southwest already has 10 international routes to seven countries but doesn't yet fly to Hawaii.

— Dennis Schaal

Virgin America CEO David Cush said the airline will have the capability to start flying from Los Angeles to Honolulu later this year, although it has yet to make a decision about the route.

Speaking at the Raymond James 36th Annual Institutional Investors Conference in Orlando March 3, Cush said Virgin America hasn’t been able to fly to Honolulu for technical reasons, namely a lack of certification for the airline’s Airbus A320 aircraft for that route.

But that issue should be resolved later this year, Cush said.

In response to an audience question, Cush elaborated on Virgin America’s philosophy toward route decisions, saying cities have to “pay their own rent” and that the airline doesn’t pick cities for network reasons as some competitors must do.

Cush explained the aviation industry is data-rich and knows before deciding on a route how many passengers are flying into a city, which airlines are transporting them and how much the passengers are paying.

Virgin America decided to stop flying to Toronto, for example, Cush said, adding that Virgin America was “wrong” about beginning service to Toronto and when the airline is wrong, it leaves.

Virgin America also reversed course and ceased flying to Philadelphia but Cush attributed that more to the changed competitive dynamics that came with the American Airlines-US Airways merger than to an analytical blunder.

Honolulu and Denver are the cities among the top ten domestic markets from LAX that Virgin America doesn’t fly to. It also doesn’t fly to Denver from San Francisco.

Along with a looming decision about Honolulu, Cush said it is likely that Virgin America will start flying to Denver.

Skift Take: The list is also packed with 10 destinations high on many travelers' wish lists.

— Jason Clampet

Singapore maintained its global ranking as the most expensive city for a second straight year on higher prices of items from wine to cars, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The island nation beat Paris, Oslo, Zurich and Sydney, which also retained their spots in the ranking, the EIU’s 2015 Worldwide Cost of Living Survey released Tuesday showed. The report compares the price of products and services including food, clothing, transport, private schools and domestic help in 140 cities with New York City as a base.

Singapore, smaller in size than New York City, has seen home prices surge to records in recent years amid rising wealth and an influx of foreigners. A vehicle-permit system makes cars more expensive than in other countries, while the expansion of the island’s private banking industry and the presence of regional hubs for global companies have drawn top talent, boosting salaries.

“The situation of an unchanged top five is very rare for the Worldwide Cost of Living Survey and disguises some significant global drivers that are impacting the cost of living everywhere,” Jon Copestake, chief retail and consumer goods analyst at EIU, said in a statement. Beyond the appearance of stability, “things are changing quickly, especially with the fall in oil prices,” he said.

Singapore’s transport costs are almost three times higher than New York and it’s the most expensive place to buy clothes globally, along with Seoul, the EIU report said. Car buyers must pay for excise and registration duties that more than double the vehicle’s market value. They must also bid for a limited number of permits that are auctioned by the government.

Hong Kong and Seoul are the other Asian cities that make up the Top 10, even as deflation and a devaluation of the Japanese yen have dragged Tokyo and Osaka lower, according to the report. The unpegging of the Swiss franc from the euro means that, at today’s exchange rates, Zurich and Geneva would be the world’s most expensive cities, it said.

At the other end of the scale, Karachi and Bengaluru, formerly known as Bangalore, offer the best value for money, the EIU report showed. Asian cities make up six of the bottom 10, it said.

The Top 10

Singapore

Paris, France

Oslo, Norway

Zurich, Switzerland

Sydney, Australia

Melbourne, Australia

Geneva, Switzerland

Copenhagen, Denmark

Hong Kong

Seoul, South Korea

This article was written by Pooja Thakur from Bloomberg and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

Skift Take: The OpenTable redesign is meant to counter the dreaded commoditization curse. There's a lot more money and value in being an integral part of the dining experience for consumers and widening the business relationship with restaurants than merely being a reservations platform.

— Dennis Schaal

Like airlines that want their businesses to be seen as more than just selling a seat, OpenTable rebranded itself to push the notion that its foundation goes way beyond just being about making a restaurant reservation.

Not only is there a new OpenTable logo and website redesign, but the previous tagline, “Make restaurant reservations the easy way,” has been replaced with “The table is just the start.”

Here’s the new logo:

And here’s the previous logo:

If the new logo looks to you merely like a couple of red circles suggesting tables, then guess again.

“With just a few shapes, our new logo says a lot,” the OpenTable website states. “It symbolizes the connection we forge between restaurants and diners, the way we help diners find the perfect fit, and the fact that our customers are always our focus.”

Who knew?

OpenTable sees its future as going beyond being a transaction company in merely connecting restaurants and their customers through a reservations platform, and becoming a dining experiences company.

The website redesign emphasizes user-generated content, social sharing, and local content.

OpenTable wants diners to be able to view photos of the cuisine, share information with friends, and peruse notes from the chef.

When it comes time to leave the restaurant, there’s no need to be dealing with the hassle of a check. Just pay with the OpenTable app and proceed onward to the next location and activity.

On the restaurants’ sign of the ledger, OpenTable’s new, cloud-based Guest Center enables the dining establishment to access information about the guest in a central location so the host or owner can greet diners in a personal way when they amble through the door.

OpenTable says the technology side of the Guest Center enables it to roll out new features faster.

It’s all designed to build better relationships between customer and restaurant — and forge a deeper and more far-reaching business relationship between OpenTable and the restaurant.

For more background, Skift interviewed OpenTable CEO Matthew Roberts in September about the evolution of the company, which the Priceline Group acquired in the summer.

Skift Take: The terrible news in all of this is that CEO Michael O'Leary has become much, much less quotable. We're going to go back and read some of his craziest statements just so we can remember the good old days.

— Jason Clampet

Ryanair Holdings Plc will limit the use of bright yellow in its cabins and uniforms as Europe’s biggest discount carrier embraces a more refined look in line with a push to improve customer care and dilute its no-frills approach.

Bulkheads, currently entirely yellow with a Ryanair logo, will feature images of holidaying families or the carrier’s destinations, while seats will be wholly blue, with yellow splashes only on overhead luggage lockers, the carrier said.

Crew uniforms will also feature “less yellow,” Chief Commercial Officer Kenny Jacobs told journalists in London today, with shirts and blouses likely to be white or blue in future. Ryanair’s latest planes will also have more legroom, and from June clients will be able to hold fares for 24 hours for 5 euros ($5.50) and also compare fares directly on its website.

Ryanair is seeking to position itself alongside retailers like Aldi and Ikea in appealing to people who require a quality product at competitive prices, the Dublin-based company said last week. While the makeover should help lure new clients, the airline is intent on keeping a distinct identity, Jacobs said.

“We’re not vanilla,” Jacobs said “We’re still going to have a bit of a Sex Pistols attitude. You’re never going to see us being boring, you’re never going to see us fade into grey and be just like every other carrier.”

Ryanair’s use of yellow in its cabins references the yellow Irish harp on the tails of its predominantly blue and white jets. Rival EasyJet Plc said Feb. 3 that it planned to introduce the first new external livery since 1998, featuring a large orange stripe on the previously white fuselage of its jets.

Charges Cut

Ryanair will trim airport check-in charges to 45 euros, from 70 euros, and pare missed-departure fees by 11 euros to 99 euros starting in May, Jacobs said. Other changes include a new in-flight menu and a push to personalize both web and mobile content, the executive said.

“There is a cost to many of these initiatives, but the costs are more than being made up from some of the savings we’re making elsewhere,” O’Leary said, citing reduced airport charges and more fuel-efficient jets.

The CEO said Ryanair has yet to be approached by British Airways parent IAG SA about buying its 30 percent holding in Aer Lingus Group Plc and that the issue remains one between the U.K. carrier and the Irish government, which also owns a stake.

“Our position is that our stake is available for sale if somebody comes up with the right offer that the board considers to be acceptable,” he said. “Not just in terms of price, but also in terms of what the investor may wish to do with Aer Lingus in the future.”

This article was written by Kari Lundgren from Bloomberg and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

Splitcab is a London-based mobile app and website allowing users to share their minicab and taxi transfers with strangers travelling in the same direction. Spitcab

Skift Take: These are the newest travel startups from Angel List vying for travelers’ interest and investors’ attention.

— Dan Peltier

Every day we alert our readers of new startups in the travel industry being listed on AngelList, as an early information service for those who keep track of such things. Every weekday, there will be a list of these newbies, along with each of their mini-profiles.

Skift Take: Self-commissioned reports should always be taken with a shaker of salt, but Emirates' impact on European travel isn't anything to be sneezed at.

— Jason Clampet

Emirates said its airline operations added a 6.8 billion-euro ($7.6 billion) annual windfall to the European economy, as the Dubai-based carrier seeks to blunt mounting criticism from rivals that it receives market-distorting state subsidies.

Emirates supported more than 85,000 jobs in the European Union, and its orders for the Airbus Group NV A380 superjumbo translate into 41,000 additional positions that are the equivalent to a 3.4 billion-euro contribution to gross domestic product in the last two years, according to a study by Emirates and European consultancy Frontier Economics.

“Emirates’ economic impact is significant,” Tim Clark, the president of the airline, said in a statement. “By stimulating demand for travel and cargo, especially in markets underserved by other airlines, Emirates contributes to the economies of the communities we serve.”

Emirates and its fellow airlines from the Persian Gulf have come under attack from carriers in Europe and the U.S., which accuse them of receiving massive subsidies, a charge Clark and his counterparts at Qatar Airways Ltd. and Etihad Airways PJSC have denied. Airlines including Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Air France-KLM Group say the absence of a level playing field has hurt them as the state-owned Gulf carriers take a larger slice of the long-haul market.

Emirates, which first started flying to Europe in 1987, now operates 350 passenger flights a week to the continent, using its fleet of wide-body aircraft and its convenient geographic location to funnel more intercontinental traffic through its Dubai hub.

This article was written by Deena Kamel Yousef from Bloomberg and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

Live satellite tracking might have led searchers to the plane but it wasn’t turned on for that trip. The flight was supposed to remain mostly over land, well within the coverage area of ground-based radar stations.

Airlines and regulators spent the past year debating how much flight tracking is necessary, balancing the economic costs against reassuring travelers another plane won’t disappear. Now a plan is moving forward that would require airlines, by the end of 2016, to know their jets’ positions every 15 minutes.

It’s not the constant measures first proposed by safety advocates after Flight 370 disappeared and it’s questionable if they would prevent another such loss. But it could make for quicker recovery of a missing aircraft and comfort the public. In an age when a missing iPhone or a FedEx package can be tracked, it’s unfathomable that something the size of a Boeing 777 could never be found.

“The public’s perception of what’s acceptable has changed radically,” said Todd Curtis, a former Boeing safety engineer and director of Airsafe.com Foundation. “The industry’s perception of what’s acceptable is not changing as quickly.”

Among airlines and regulators there is a consensus that tracking all 90,000 daily flights around the world would be too expensive, particularly for developing countries, and have limited benefits.

The industry thinks Flight 370 was an anomaly not likely to be repeated. If airlines, especially those in developing nations, are to spend money upgrading cockpits, they would rather add collision-avoidance systems that prevent fatalities.

“If you’re too aggressive and stringent in setting up a requirement, countries will just elect not to participate,” said John Hansman, an aeronautics professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The International Civil Aviation Organization, part of the United Nations, outlined the new tracking requirements last month. A formal vote on the rules is expected by November. Each country’s air traffic regulator would then have to accept and implement them. Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia just announced plans to be among the first nations to test such tracking.

In the near team, airlines would be responsible getting updates from their planes every 15 minutes. That could be via ground radar, automatically by satellite while flying over oceans or even having the pilots verbally report their location over radios. The aviation group doesn’t specify the form of communication but squarely puts the onus on the airlines. It doesn’t require the airlines to spend $50,000 to $100,000 a jet to retrofit cockpits with new avionic equipment. Most of the technology is already in place.

British satellite communications company Inmarsat, which helped investigators determine the final flight path of Flight 370, says 11,000 commercial planes already have its satellite connection, representing more than 90 percent of the world’s long-haul fleet. Airplanes flying over land would be tracked by ground radar stations.

Flight 370 was also supposed to be tracked by ground radar. Airline experts note that if 15-minute requirement was in place last year, Malaysia Airlines would have realized sooner that the plane was missing. Instead, it took more than a week to determine that the jet most likely went down in the Indian Ocean, roughly 1,100 miles (1,770 kilometers) west of Australia.

Still, in 15 minutes a plane can travel more than 150 miles.

The 15-minute standard “is a nice way to say, ‘We’re making progress’ but not really doing anything,” said Ernest S. Arvai, a partner with aviation consultancy AirInsight.

That’s why there is a second phase to the proposed rules. Any plane with 19 seats or more, built after 2020, would be required to automatically transmit its location every minute if the plane deviated from its route, made an unusual move such as a sudden drop or climb in elevation or if a fire was detected. Pilots could not disable the system.

However, given that aircraft can easily fly for 20 years or more, it would be 2040 or later that every plane in the sky would have such tracking abilities.

“You have to be realistic,” said Andrew Herdman, director general of the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines. In the future, airlines will benefit from new, cheaper avionics, but now they need “to make best use of existing technology.”

The more frequent the reporting, the easier it is to find a missing plane.

Before Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic in 2009, the airline had already had programmed its long-range aircraft to report their position every 10 minutes. The actual crash happened just five minutes after the last transmission. However, there was still a vast search area: more than 6,500 square miles.

A one minute reporting frequency would help pinpoint a jet within about 7 miles.

Industry experts estimate that the 15 minute tracking plan would add about $2 to the cost of a long-distance flight.

However, streaming live data on a plane’s performance, which is similar to what’s in the flight data recorders recovered after a crash, could cost $7 to $13 a minute depending on the amount of data sent.

“They’re happy to provide it for Wi-Fi for passengers because they can make money from it,” said AirInsight’s Arvai. “But when it comes to an expense that has no money related coming into it, that’s a different story.”

Copyright (2015) Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

This article was written by Scott Mayerowitz and David Koenig from The Associated Press and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

Skift Take: Cape Town has a unique set of challenges, but it's thinking smart about the assets it has in order to grab the share of visitors it thinks it deserves.

— Jason Clampet

Editor’s Note: Skift is publishing a series of interviews with CEOs of destination marketing organizations where we discuss the future of their organizations and the evolving strategies for attracting visitors. Read all the interviews as they come out here.

Earlier this winter Enver Duminy, CEO of Cape Town Tourism, visited Skift’s office in New York City along with Velma Corcoran, Executive Manager Marketing for the organization, to discuss the city’s tourism marketing efforts.

During the conversation we touched on the challenge of selling a long-haul city escape in a region that’s known for being a bucket list safari destination, as well as how African destinations try to educate potential travelers in order to overcome stereotypes and lack of basic geography skills.

Most notably, Duminy discussed the role currency fluctuations play in travel planning and what destinations can do to better position themselves to react better to changes.

An edited version of the interview appears here.

Skift: You did well after the World Cup. Not every destination does well after a big event. What do you think Cape Town did post-World Cup or during or in the lead up that made it pay off in the way that planners of these events dream of?

Enver Duminy: I think if we look at what the World Cup did, it just started showcasing Africa and South Africa beyond the perception of safari. I think that’s the first thing. We looked at it as a big opportunity to create a lot more awareness of the changing landscape of South Africa. 20 years before or at least 15 years before the World Cup there was still this whole thing of it’s a new destination, still a lot of uncertainty. Yes, it’s aspirational but what is beyond that? Most travelers still looked at Africa as safari. So when we look at World Cup it became just, again, an opportunity to create a lot more awareness by leveraging a global event. You would not get air play to that value if you had to do something else.

But if you also look, then, at what we did differently, I don’t think we did anything significantly differently. The big focus was about legacy and exit projects from the World Cup.

Skift: Such as?

Duminy: If we look at making sure there was football fields that were built within communities that were disadvantaged. Creating programs of learning and educating future coaches, particularly looking at football. There was also fast tracking of a lot of infrastructure that would have taken a lot longer if it wasn’t for the World Cup. So we’re looking at creating accessibility from impoverished communities into the central business districts, looking at integrated rail as well as bus services.

Then from a tourism perspective it was just the opportunity, again, to show the destination as this metropolis. There’s a thriving economy, there’s investment opportunities. When people came out for the World Cup they could also do business. This was great opportunity. They were speaking to markets that, traditionally, would not be speaking to because of the participants within the World Cup itself. That gave us opportunity to actually market the destination to them.

Questions and concerns around safety were dealt with. It’s kind of just trying to change perceptions. It’s still a distance from market and from our key source market. That is one of the biggest challenges for us. UK, U.S., Germany, in that order, are still, from an international tourism perspective, still the biggest drivers for tourism to South Africa and to Cape Town. We’ve always been seen as a leisure destination and specifically over summer. That is one of our biggest challenges. How do we start to get more people to travel to Cape Town over our winter period, which is not as cool or as miserable as in some other places.

If we look at the time that people have available to travel now, it’s getting shorter. And the cost of travel is becoming a lot more expensive. So those are all factors that can make people say yes, I want to go there, yes, it’s great and everything’s aspirational but I’d rather stay at home or I’ll do a staycation in my country, et cetera, et cetera.

Now that we’ve made the wins about the destination how do we create conversion? So that’s what we’re focusing on over the next three to five years is creating conversion by still continuing to be getting authentic storytellers and then making sure that we provide the right content to the consumer at the right time that leads to the sale, which was something that we’ve never done before. Even if I look at it from a national tourism perspective, they don’t focus on conversion. Theirs is still continuing to be about the wins.

However, our business is completely different. As Cape Town tourism, we are an industry association. We’re similar to NYC & Company in that we’ve got over 1,200 businesses as members. That’s kind of how we are constituted. Then we provide destination marketing services for the city.

As Cape Town tourism we’re kind of slap bang in the middle of the visitor, the industry, and local government. Our challenge is how do we make sure, over the next 3 years, that we increase demand for the destination, but specifically over the winter period, and at the same time try to generate income.

Skift: What’s been the most effective method of either increasing more visits from the UK, the U.S., and Germany or from other destinations that you’re trying to get into?

Duminy: I think, if you look at the numbers, it’s that even the rate of growth from our key source markets was small. It’s a bigger base. Whereas, we’ve seen bigger increases from China. Asia has increased, South America. So mostly from the EU, excluding Russia, we have seen increases but I think over probably the last six months the biggest challenge for us has been the effect of Ebola and the perception that it affects the entire African continent.

Skift: I apologize. I blame our schools.

Duminy: I think also that we will definitely feel that, specifically if you look at when those markets travel to the destination. Hopefully, when we get the latest numbers we’ll be able to see the size of the impact. We also noticed that there has been a change through a lot more independent travelers. Yes, a group may be affected but sometimes the independent traveler makes up his mind for himself and then kind of goes to a destination. So we may see that play itself out now when we get the latest numbers.

I think also one thing that plays in our favor is exchange rate. As much as it does effect our economy but for tourism it’s a good thing, especially for international travel. Why that is also good because then domestics will not travel overseas because of unfavorable rate for them. They will then do domestic travel. What will be interesting for us when we unpack the numbers now over our high season is to see where the shift has been.

Part of what I’m asking my team to look at is the effect of exchange rates and having exchange rate strategy. We start looking at markets because when you do that in finance and economics you can always build it in and you can’t do that. From a tourism perspective, we need to do the same thing. Yes, it’s all normal marketing intelligence and all those things but when you look at markets also look at exchange rate. Exchange rate, even within the destination, affects different people within different social standings.

So if I look at youth travel, they’re not affected by exchange rate. They’ll go to a destination and then when they’re there they actually see the value for money, whereas an elderly couple who’s a lot more tight-lipped on the purse, exchange rate actually does have a influence on the decision of where I go to because I want to get maximum value. It’s about understanding that and then making sure you can then get the right packaging and pricing to start creating that conversion.

For us, hopefully we will start to see what that impact is but the growth for us, specifically after the key markets, has purely been because, again like Velma says, we’ve capitalized on the pure exposure we get from those markets. I think that the trade themselves have to understand the destination much better but I think the challenge is always trying to get them as much updated content and experiences. I think sometimes they’ll still sell the same thing in the same way and the consumer has changed. Also, from a consumer perspective, we know that they’re not always going to the trade, shopping around. They’re basing it on social media, what others are saying, experiences, and they’re making up their minds. I think with the value of her team the biggest focus and shift had been saying how can we leverage social media a lot more.

Skift: How do you think your shift of the focus from the trade to other outlets has fared?

Velma Corcoran: Our budget is minuscule. So we don’t have any money to do any sort of above the line advertising programs. We don’t even have money for joint marketing agreements. We’ve had to be really really smart about how we work. I think the key things that we’ve done that we’ve shifted in the last while is I think in the last three years our relationship with South Africa Tourism, which was previously not as strong, has become really really strong in the market. So we really leverage off what they do and we are quite smart about constantly feeding them with information about what’s new in Cape Town, what’s cool, sending them images, whatever so that it makes it really easy when they’re selling South Africa to put Cape Town in.

Skift: Because they have the content …

Corcoran: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Their last TV ad that they did, it looked like it was an ad for Cape Town. It was great for us and a lot of other people were quite unhappy but that is from us being relentlessly pursuing that relationship and then, in the various markets that they’re ads read, building our relationships with the country managers.

The second thing that we work hard on is media hosting. What we try and do is, if any key media come to Cape Town, is really to help them uncover the various layers of the destination. We’ll obviously help in terms of experiences, et cetera but we’ll meet with them, we’ll try and figure out what story angles they want to cover.

If you’re more focused on food, how do we hook you up to key foodies? How can you go and spend the day with a blogger and they can show you their version of Cape Town? So really having to uncover those layers.

We were probably one of the first destinations that starting doing blogger trips with the hashtag. Now everybody does it. It’s become a bit … I don’t know how credible they are anymore. I think what we have realized is that, as a DMO, we’re not the best people to tell the story because that’s our jobs.

So we’re not as authentic as other people. So really working with influences … and I think the influencers have moved beyond the travel blogger because I think people only really read travel blogs when they’re planning their trip. Working with lifestyle bloggers, working with Instagram, working with whoever to try and get them to tell the stories … and actually, even working with Instagram we’ve now realized that what you can’t do is the sort of traditional Instameet doesn’t work anymore because then you’ve got five guys who all take pride in what they’re doing but they’re sort of competing for the same picture. So how do you help send them on different journeys so that they can create the best pictures?

Then, in terms of working with a trade, what we realized is the trade are lazy. The trade want money. There was while where we would go to trade shows and we’d have terrible meetings with the trade because they’d be like okay so let’s have a joint-marketing agreement and you give us $50,000, and we’re like we don’t have $50,000, and they’d be like okay well why are you meeting with us? Lots of those meetings.

Skift: In terms of being smart, I just want to return to the thing you were talking about. Currency and exchange rates. Is that something that you’ve seen other DMOs do or you have a history of doing there or is it just your background, you’re like okay we need to think about this smarter?

Duminy: It’s my background. One of the things we have done in order to address winter and seasonality is to start looking at creating a seasonality filter of the markets. The point is to market to the UK. They majority of them will not travel in their summer, when it’s our winter. So what are the reasons, then, to create that travel and understanding each of the markets because people’s budgets are a lot tighter. You need to understand fluctuations and being able to then measure those fluctuations is quite cool when it’s relevant and the timing, specifically.

I don’t notice any other DMOs that do it. If they were smart, I assume they would be doing that anyway but I think our challenge is that the distance from market. You need to make it as appealing as possible for the conversion. I think you said in the beginning is that we’re willing to try anything and then see if it works.

We also do our own research. We’re created our own seasonality index. So visioning the impact of seasonality and then determining what we could shift why and how to make differences. For us, it’s just about trying to doing things … I wouldn’t say smarter. I think we just do things differently because of the challenges we face and I think with smaller budgets you are a lot more picky about what you invest in.

I think it’s because we now are being seen in place on those lists against the bigger competitors people start looking at us and say well what are you doing that’s making people come. I think once people come to the destination it actually sells itself. It’s just amazing when people get there. They are blown away by what their perception was to the experience. That is important for us because, as much as we can do all the advertising and the selling and promotion, it will fail in comparison when people get to the destination that’s not looking up to their promise. Right now it’s exceeding that promise. It’s just a part of our own end destination.

Skift: You said perception a couple of times and I think that Africa, as a giant continent with many many countries very far apart, has perception challenges, especially in the U.S. Ebola, you mentioned, even though I think probably Florida is closer to where Ebola broke out than South Africa. What’s the most effective means of not necessarily battling against perception but changing perceptions?

Duminy: I think that it’s through continuous education. What we do is we do very active communication but it’s also proactive communication. It’s about educating trade consumers, using social media, our platforms to start monitoring that because if you just allow it to start happening and you don’t even gauge your audience, you lose out on those opportunities.

When you get here and you start seeing the trend in the narrative. You start seeing that there’s opportunity. I can bring my family the next time I come. So, for us, it’s all about making sure we monitor media quite often, it’s about seeding life stories and then letting communications grow organically. So we will seed a thread and then just let it organically grow instead of trying to curate things too much. That’s where you start. You have to deal with the good and the bad, whether it’s racism, Ebola, safety, the global world has the same issues.

Skift: You mentioned money a couple of times about being smart with budgets. Do you think that there’s a better model for a DMO out there that just nobody’s been able to pull off yet or that you guys are working towards?

Duminy: Something that we started focusing now on is saying how do we change our model. A limitation for us is not to become independent from government funding or from private sector funding. It’s about finding the right level of matching. I think that’s always that challenge is that with membership organization people want to pay to deliver on a specific expectation. At local government they need to show how we use tax dollars and it’s about balancing that against other needs like safety, health, and everything else.

If you can demonstrate value, I think it makes the whole emotional conversation a lot easier than traditional way we always deal it of begging for money, saying will this justify our existence, which lots of DMOs have to do now. Can you justify because the relevance of DMOs, like Velma said, it’s like who listens to a DMO? It’s what is it, what value do you add? It’s about finding that within the content do you share with people and then making sure that the end destination experience surpasses what you’re promising to the world. That is a thing where we see some of the shifts for ourselves.

Passengers maneuver through one of the cramped hallways at New York's LaGuardia Airport. Frank Eltman / Associated Press

Skift Take: We like it when rules that exist for little reason start to fade away.

— Grant Martin

What to Know Now

One of the biggest headaches of flying into New York City from the west coast is having to deal with either Newark or JFK. Both are crazy far from Manhattan and lack the real convenience of LaGuardia — but since 1984 there has been a perimeter rule in effect preventing transcontinental flights from landing at the smaller airport.

This year, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, an organization that’s as notable for its political cronyism is it is its abysmal planning, says it is thinking of dropping that rule, allowing flights from west coast cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco to finally approach LaGuardia. The folks over at Airways News further speculate on whether the relaxed rules could ever apply to D.C.’s Reagan, though there’s less momentum behind that effort, and there are more political concerns, too.

Neither deal is anywhere close to complete (and D.C.’s is little more than a pipedream) but a tired business traveler can hope.

Social Quote of the Day

The LGA perimeter rule is one of those things done just to mess with travelers, like the Port Authority or no subway access. Fun, eh?

Airlines

Plane Tracking Pilot Program to Begin in Australia, Malaysia and Indonesia: Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia will lead a trial of an enhanced method of tracking aircraft over remote oceans to allow planes to be more easily found should they vanish like Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Australia’s transport minister said Sunday. Read more at Skift

United Tells Its Pilots About Four ‘Major Safety Events’: United Airlines, the world’s second-largest carrier, sent its pilots a memo last month warning of “major safety events and near misses.” Read more at Skift

Revenue-Based Frequent Flyer Programs are Good for Flyers: When you commodify the relationship, and you turn the frequent flyer program into a straight rebate there’s little advantage to choosing one program or another. Read more at View from the Wing

A Few Easy Ways to Make the Friendly Skies More Friendly: There’s one simple thing that the airlines haven’t yet figured out, despite many of them being fairly astute on how to manage themselves in a world where they don’t control the narrative. Read more at Skift

Airports

Does JetBlue or Delta Win With New Long-Haul Rules From New York’s LaGuardia? Delta Air Lines Inc. would be the clear winner if a 30-year-old rule restricting direct flights to the West Coast from New York’s LaGuardia airport is lifted. JetBlue Airways Corp. may have the most to lose, aviation consultants said. Read more at Skift

New App Makes Clearing Customs and Border Control in Miami a Breeze: Miami International Airport (MIA) has announced that qualifying passengers traveling through the airport can now use the Mobile Passport app, for iOS and Android devices, which speeds up the process of clearing U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Read more at Skift

United and Port Authority Subpoenaed Over ‘Chairman’s Flight’: For 18 months, a 50-seat regional jet left United Airlines’ Newark hub each Thursday night bound for Columbia, South Carolina. On Monday mornings, United Express flew back to Newark. Read more at Skift

Tech

Uber Reveals Data Breach That Affected 50,000 Drivers in 2014: Uber Technologies Inc. said an unauthorized third party accessed the company’s database last year and may have taken data on about 50,000 drivers. Read more at Skift

9 Top Hotel CEOs Talk About Guests’ Insatiable Demands for Wi-Fi: If there’s a subject nearly every traveler can agree on, it’s that hotel Wi-Fi should be as fast and as cheap (read: free) as possible. Read more at Skift

Gogo Wi-Fi Gets More Expensive But Free In-Flight Internet Models Emerge: Gogo Inc., like other in-flight Wi-Fi providers, faces capacity constraints — too many passengers trying to get online with too-little bandwidth — so it has a coping solution: raise rates to discourage usage. Read more at Skift

Hotels

5 Top Hotel CEOs Talk About the Unprecedented Rate of Change in Hospitality: Change is good, unless you’re a hotelier trying to make sense of rapidly changing consumer habits. Read more at Skift

Marriott Announces Disastrous 2015 Award Category Changes: Unsurprisingly, the changes are once again a slap in the face to all travelers. Of the hotels, 36% are changing categories — 25% are moving down in category, while an absurd 75% are moving up in category. Read more at Frugal Travel Guy

Skift Take: So what if British Airways took their sweet time to come up with these suites? Better late for the better than early for naught.

— Marisa Garcia

British Airways has filed a patent application for a number of seating innovations which could revolutionize the design of aircraft cabins.

The airline known for establishing new standards in comfort — the first to introduce full lie-flat seats in First class and Business class cabins — has of late fallen a bit behind its peers, particularly in its Business class product. But, as we’ve learned, the airline has only been biding its time and working behind the scenes not just to catch up but to leap far ahead.

A more recent patent application, accredited to Peter Cooke, Design Lead at British Airways, points in several very different directions.

A complex set of cabin innovations presented in the patent application include a revolutionary seat fastening system for the cabin floor which allows for more flexible cabin configurations. This is far more exciting for those of us who geek-out on cabin certification than it is for passengers, but it hints at British Airway’s willingness to think beyond a cabin strictly divided by class. With these unique flooring fasteners, a variety of seat structures could be placed together in the same cabin space.

The design of new reclining economy seats illustrated in the patent feel more like modern Scandinavian design chaises than any of the number of similar economy seats in the market.

Family and meeting private cabins feature in the patent proposal, allowing passengers traveling in groups to sit on opposite sides of a table either to be entertained together, or to hash-out strategy in preparation for that critical meeting.

The Business class suites in this concept are forward/aft facing, resulting in a denser cabin which still offers generous personal space. Passengers could enjoy the full privacy afforded by the screen between suites, or enjoy conversation with travel companions by lowering this divider.

All of the concepts presented by British Airways in this latest patent application show the airline is willing to think differently about the on-board experience, balancing personal space with a sense of community.

Whenever new cabin concepts appear on our radar, we must warn that the final product might differ and that the product presented may not even fly. But we sure hope these do.

If British Airways introduces even one of these proposed cabin products to its fleet, it will once again have set a high bar, just as it did in the 1990s. Competitors will have to put a spring in their step to catch up.